Description

We start our tour of America’s great jazz cities with the sites and sounds of Chicago by tracing the arrival of jazz and how it established the city's reign as America’s jazz capital during the 1920s, leading it to grow into one of the country’s richest avant garde jazz scenes. We’ll talk with the owner of the storied Green Mill Cocktail Lounge about his epic restoration of the club to its former speakeasy glory, hear how the Green Mill helped found the improv-rich tradition that is the poetry slam, and tour the bizarre outer-space-themed world of Sun Ra.

Episode Transcript

Host: Jeff Haas

Guests: Dave Jemilo, Neil Tesser, John Szwed

Music

• Louis Armstrong “Alligator Crawl”
• Deep Blue Organ Trio “Goin’ To Town”
• Ramsey Lewis “The In Crowd”
• King Oliver “Jazzin’ Babies’ Blues”
• King Oliver ”The Trumpet's Prayer”
• Louis Armstrong “West End Blues”
• Louis Armstron “Wild Man Blues”
• Benny Goodman “Sing, Sing, Sing”
• Sun Ra “Space Is The Place”
• Ahmad Jamal “Poinciana (The Song of the Tree)”
• Ahmad Jamal ”Wave”
• Benny Goodman “Moonglow”
• Bix Beiderbecke “In A Mist (Bixology)”
• Ahmad Jamal “Ahmad's Blues”
• Frank Sinatra “Chicago (That Toddlin’ Town)”
• Von Freeman “Doin' it Right Now” 
• Sun Ra “Disco 2021”
• Sun Ra “Love in Outer Space”
• Sun Ra “Night of the Purple Moon”
• Sun Ra “On Jupiter” 
• Art Ensemble of Chicago “Dreaming of the Masters”
• Von Freeman “Sweet and Lovely” 
• Kurt Elling and Jon Hendricks “Goin’ to Chicago”
• Count Basie “Going To Chicago Blues”

Original Air Date: January 28, 2012

Radio broadcast produced by Lou Blouin and Jeff Haas

Radio broadcast audio engineering by Jack Conners and Brock Mormon

Podcast produced by Sam Boase-Miller and Erik Saras

Podcast audio remastering by Sam Boase-Miller

Transcripts and show notes by Erik Saras

Theme Song: Jeff Haas Trio & Friends “Giving In”

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The New Jazz Archive radio broadcasts originally sponsored by Chateau Chantal. The New Jazz Archive receives no revenue from podcast reissues of radio broadcasts.